Brilliant But Lazy / Anime & Manga

Brilliant, but Lazy characters in anime and manga.

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• Aggretsuko: Director Ton is usually seeing practicing his golf swing and bossing around his underlings (especially Retsuko), but during the end-of-quarter crunch in Episode 10 he's shown to be a whiz at making calculations with an abacus to the point of correcting other's work who used a computer.
• Karma Akabane from Assassination Classroom is solidly in this trope, getting 4th place in the school on midterms when the odds were stacked against his class due to additional last minute questions they hadn't been told to study for out of sheer smarts...and also being a lazy jokester. He's in class 3-E for his bully hunting and delinquent ways, not his grades. However, the trope is deconstructed with the term finals, where Karma doesn't study at all and drops to 13th place. True, 13th in the entire school without studying when the exams are designed to be insanely difficult is no mean feat, but the pain comes from Karma knowing (and knowing everyone else also knows) that he can do better. In the final test of the series, he gets a perfect score, having studied in order to beat his rival who is both brilliant and a hard worker.
• Tomo from Azumanga Daioh shows signs of intelligence, but clearly doesn't put it to any use, academic or mundane. The only sign of her intelligence is the high marks she gets when she actually does study. Her 100% on the health test (beating out Child Prodigy Chiyo) highlights this best, but another example is her getting into the same school Yomi did.
• Hiramaru from Bakuman。 — self-taught manga artist and writer who took one glimpse at a recent issue of Shonen Jump, learned a few tricks, and produced manga so good it got serialized on the first try. However, he decided to make manga because he thought that's an easy job and once he finds out it's not a cakewalk, he does everything he can to avoid working.
• Roger Smith of The Big O is 'bout half an example. When he has a job, he'll go at it with the tenacity of a badger, and won't rest till it's done. If he DOESN'T have a mission scheduled, however, he's quite content to stay in bed all day — most of the time, it seems that the only reason he gets up at ALL is due to R. Dorothy Waynewright's nerve-wracking piano-playing. In an early episode, he goes through a major mission (including obligatory Humongous Mecha battle) just to get her some piano-lessons so she'll at least wake him up gently. (It works, but even afterwards she still resorts to her old rapid-fire "Alarm Clock" playing whenever Roger stays in bed 'till late afternoon.)
• Raia in Black Clover is characterized largely by his lack of desire to do anything until coerced to do so. However, he is also a master of Copy Magic, a set of spells that allow him access to every spell of any spellbook he has come into physical contact with, and is not only able to gain instant proficiency with them all, he was born with enormous mana reserves allowing him to use those spells with equal or greater power and potency than their original users. He can even create a duplicate of Asta's Anti-Magic swords, though he could not copy their Anti-Magic traits. It is only logical that his total lack of initiative is paired up with an innate skill in magic that allows him to use spells without having to learn or practice them.
• Bleach:
  • Kyouraku prefers to get drunk and veg out under the sun to fighting, despite being one of the strongest captains in the Soul Society. When ordered to stop the intruders, he tries to avoid fighting by asking Chad to drink with him instead. When he fights the most powerful Espada, Starrk realizes they share this personality, and, believing Kyouraku hates fighting as much as him, suggests they engage in a pretend fight until the war is over. He discovers too late that he is wrong; Kyouraku may be "brilliant but lazy", but he's actually a Confusion Fu specialist who believes in getting a fight finished as fast as possible by misdirection and pragmatism. There's a good reason, why he, instead of Byakuya or Unohana, becomes the Captain-Commander, after Soul Society gets its worst defeat in a thousand years.
  • Rangiku is one of the most talented and well-respected lieutenants in the Gotei 13. She's been around for a very long time (longer than Squad 10's current captain, Toshiro, even), has extensive academic knowledge of fighting and kidou, and always has her captain's back in battle. However, she has turned avoiding work into an art form, has mastered surreptitiously pushing her duties onto other people, is an expert at disappearing when admin is required and loves partying and drinking.
• In Brave10, Yukimura gets the Braves to do all the heavy lifting for him in private and public matters, and would sooner pretend to be sick in bed rather than greet his own brother, but his brilliance is unquestionable.
• Ran from Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran is an extremely talented sword fighter, but prefers to spend her time looking for sake and lying around in sunny fields. Don't you dare do anything to Meow, though. Or deprive her of her much-beloved sake.
• Code Geass:
  • Lelouch Lamperouge delibrately cultivates a public image of this as an alternative to pretending to be an Upper-Class Twit; however, it's true in regards to "everyday life" (i.e., everything not relating to fighting The Empire), as he could easily score straight A's and move on to a successful corporate career (and maybe even score a few girls on the side) if he wasn't so tied up in revenge. He also feels that becoming successful in Brittanian society would be a form of giving in to his father: he wants no part of the world Brittania has to offer.
  • Rakshata Chawla is another example. She's a brilliant scientist and the self-proclaimed "Mother" of Kallen's Gurren mecha, but she prefers to spend most of the series lounging about on a sofa and smoking a pipe. Even when the Black Knights are in the middle of a heated battle, she'll just be laying on a sofa on the bridge of the ship, not giving a care about what will happen next.
• Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop may not be a genius, but he is a better shogi player than Jet and outwits criminals regularly. He is also rarely seen upright without the promise of food.
• Matt from Death Note. He is the third-smartest student from Wammy's House, but would much rather be playing video games than doing just about anything else.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Played with regarding some of the Saiyans.
    • Gohan has the potential to become the strongest fighter in the universe. However, he lacks the the instinctive love of combat that pure-blood Saiyans like his father and Vegeta have and has developed a tendency to not keep up with his martial arts training in times of peace so his strength and ability greatly fluctuates. On the other hand, when the people he cares about are in danger and matters are looking very serious, Gohan becomes intensely focused on training and shows off why he is his father's son. He is also more naturally driven to scholarly pursuits, earning top grades in school and ending up with a good job to support his family as an adult. It's not so much that he is lazy, more that he tends to put effort into his other interests if he is able to.
    • Goku has spent his life training with many people to become stronger and shows a love of doing so coinciding with his Saiyan blood and his own personality. However, because training, fighting, and eating are his main interests, it's hard to get him to do anything else. This is a point of constant tension between Chi-Chi and him since she wants him to get a job. She eventually gets her way, making Goku get a job as a farmer, which in a roundabout way suits him due to its potential to be physically laborious.
    • Much like Goku, if it doesn't relate to becoming stronger, Vegeta has no interest in it. This is lampshaded by Bulma when she asks how Saiyans can spend days training, yet refuse to do something simple like cut the grass.
    • Goten and Trunks are straighter examples. They have the talent to far surpass their fathers, but like Gohan, lack the instinctive love of combat so while they train, they are often distracted in doing other things like playing around as kids.
    • Goku's older brother Raditz is made this retroactively. While in the anime itself he is little more than a Starter Villain, the video game Dragon Ball Heroes reveals that Raditz shares his brother's ability to learn any attack after seeing it performed, a very rare gift in the Dragon Ball world that would have made Raditz by far a more versatile fighter than any of his Saiyan cohorts if he'd ever utilized it properly. But unlike virtually every other pure-blooded Saiyan in the series, he is shown to prize survival above a good fight, and so never advanced beyond the strength and skill of a rank-and-file Frieza grunt.
  • Frieza was born naturally strong. Without ever trying, he was the strongest being in the universe before Super Saiyan Goku came along. In Resurrection 'F', he finally decides to subvert this after coming back to life, realizing that if a Saiyan could go and exceed him and monsters like Majin Buu, what would training do for someone like him? He still falls into this, however, since he doesn't bother to master his Golden transformation before going to Earth and never fully learns from his mistakes on Namek. As another testament to his laziness, during the Namek Saga, literally his entire army has to die before he can be bothered to so much as track down the Z-Fighters himself, let alone challenge them — he assumes Dodoria and Zarbon would deal with his Vegeta problem, and when that doesn't happen, he calls in the Ginyu Force, only to find out later while he is off on an errand (to figure out how to activate the Dragon Balls) that they all got killed as well. By his return in the Universe Survival arc in Super he finally subverted it by fully mastering the power of his Golden form through meditating in Hell...which started by his daydreams of murdering Goku. It's telling it took dying twice before he finally fully appreciated the value of hard work.
  • Yajirobe is legitimately one of the most powerful human fighters on Earth, and could probably give Krillin a run for his money if he applied himself, but nine times out of ten, he just doesn't care. Tellingly, the last time we see him training in earnest is to prepare for the arrival of the Saiyans, but he gives up about halfway through and just snacks the whole time. Not even the threat of global annihilation is enough motivation for Yajirobe to get off his ass and do something.
  • There's also Lord Beerus, Universe 7's God of Destruction, along with his brother Champa, the God of Destruction of Universe 6. Both are their universe's second strongest fighters behind their angels who have the power to obliterate planets with just a wave of their hands. That is, if they can get off their asses to do so. Champa is gluttonous and Beerus takes decades-long naps. Heck, Universe 7's low power level is because of Beerus' laziness as he allowed Majin Buu and Frieza's rampages to happen.
• Dr. Greg "Bear" Egan from Eureka Seven is something on an example... it's just that his lethargy and intelligence don't really interact very much. His reclusive nature and slow speed of movement are mainly due to his colossal size and enormous weight problem.
• Agon of Eyeshield 21. Said to be the quarterback that comes only once every 100 years, and he never shows up to practice. He spends every day womanizing, beating up people, ditching those women, and the few times he practices, he doesn't even put on his uniform. And he's still awesome at football. A rare villainous example of this trope; part of the reason Agon is so odious is that he was born with incredible talent and can dominate almost anyone without putting forth any effort. He is fully aware of this and even laughs about it, mocking those who try hard. In a series that's all about improving oneself through hard work and effort, that puts him in direct philosophical opposition to basically every other character. Emphasized by Agon's brother, who has had to work hard his entire life to be half as good as Agon is.
• Fairy Tail: Lucy notes this trope early on in the manga, stating that if she trained her celestial spirits (which are already fairly powerful), they could potentially be more powerful than Natsu. However, her initial cowardly nature forces her to take a more Weak, but Skilled approach to fighting.
• Appropriately enough, Sloth from Fullmetal Alchemist. He's easily one of the most powerful and the fastest homunculi, he just can't be bothered to do anything unless Father forces him to. Unusually, his apathy is a mental form of Laborious Laziness; he's spent the past several decades digging a massive tunnel around Amestris almost non-stop, solely because Father told him to. Despite Sloth's constant complaints, the idea of just not doing that doesn't really occur to him, because thinking for himself is simply too much effort. In his dying moments, he decides that even living is too much of a hassle.
• The protagonist of Gintama, Sakata Gintoki is an amazingly skilled fighter who could slice through a legion of enemies in seconds, yet spends his days scrambling after JUMP magazines and lounging about eating sweets.
• The title character of Gabriel DropOut was The Ace of her old school in Heaven, and had a promising future as a top-ranked angel. Upon coming to Earth, however, she very quickly became a lazy, video game addicted shut-in who only does the bare minimum of schooling and work needed to get by. On the rare occasions she can be bothered to work up the motivation, Gabriel shows that that intelligence and skill hasn't gone anywhere, but she's too burned out to use any of it.
• Miyako of Hidamari Sketch is a non-Book Dumb example. Every time we saw her in classes that are not studio arts, she always dozes off — yet her junior high grades were so great that she had the academic portion of her high school admission exam exempted.
• Played with in Himouto! Umaru-chan. Umaru actually does get solid grades, excels in school, and presents the outward image of being The Ace. The instant she's back at home and inside, she reverts to her true nature of a lazy Spoiled Brat Otaku who would happily spend all day watching anime, playing video games, and buying stuff off the Bland-Name Product version of Amazon.
• Hoshin Engi: Taijuu Rokkun is one of the most powerful immortals in the series, likely second only to Shinkouhyou and the first peoples like Jyoka and Fukki, but he is so lazy that he can spend two years sleeping continuously, and live in a special suit with an artificial respirator so that he doesn't have to bother breathing.
• Oreki Houtarou in Hyouka has proven to be remarkably intelligent and gifted with quick deductions, and (as theorized by his best friend Satoshi) would have been one of the most popular and academically outstanding men in his school if he weren't so lazy.
  Oreki: If I don't have to do it, I won't. If I have to, I'll do it quick.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia the Animation:
  • Neptune from can be a very competent politician when she's not playing video games or trying to push her work onto Histoire.
  • Also Vert: if she's not busy spending days on end playing an MMO, she's smart enough to make a plan that gets Nepgear to strip naked.
• The male lead of Itazura Na Kiss Naoki is Teen Genius N°1 in Japan but never bothers to actually and doesn't understand why anyone is so anxious about going to university to continue studying. His mother explains, since there's nothing he can't accomplish, he lacks dreams and ambitions.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Joseph Joestar is this to a T. He's noted by every single character in the series to be a Hamon prodigy and incredibly skilled, but once Part 2 is over he completely neglects his Hamon training to the point where by Part 4, he never even uses it. He even admits himself he despises hard work.
• Saruhiko Fushimi from K. He has been mentioned to be extremely talented, except that he slacks off more often than not. He became third-in-command of Scepter 4 by the age of 19.
• Kill la Kill:
  • Ryuko. The first Drama CD reveals she finds studying so boring that if she has a week to study for a very important test, she'll sleep the entire time except for when she has to eat and go to the bathroom. Despite this, she's able to analyze what kind of answers Satsuki wants to hear on the test and despite making a mistake about whether or not Satsuki considered her eyebrows big, succeeds with ease. Additionally, when she's fighting Inumuta, she's able to figure out his methodical fighting style and easily devises a way to attack him so that he won't be able to think his way out of it.
  • Mako doesn't normally show this, but when she wants something, she will pull out all the stops just to get it. Noted examples are when she catches weaponized paper currency with her bare hands because she wanted to eat all the good food in Osaka and her successful tenure as the Fight Club president to give her family a better life.
• Hirasawa Yui from K-On! mostly obeys this trope. One time she is so busy practicing her guitar that she doesn't study for an exam and fails it which requires her to take a makeup exam. Yui's fellow band members (mostly Mio) help her study for the makeup exam, and she ends up getting 100% — better than any of them. On the other hand, it seems like to learn one thing she has to forget something else.
• Ishigami from Kaguya-sama: Love Is War is acknowledged as being very intelligent (to the point that Shirogane was willing to beg him not to quit his role as Student Council treasurer), but he was ranked second-to-last among the first year students and on academic probation at the beginning of the series due to his apathy towards school. Kaguya theorizes that this attitude is a result of him having been suspended for several months during his final year of middle school, and later encourages him to start taking school seriously so he can impress his crush Tsubame. It's initially deconstructed, as Ishigami is so used to being lazy that despite intense studying he only moves up about 20 spots, nowhere near the heights he wanted, but then reconstructed as he still keeps at it and eventually results in him ranking 36th during the end of year exams.
• The titular character of the Kaiji series. At the start of the series he's a deadbeat who has spends all his time gambling, but when he's thrown into some Absurdly High-Stakes Game at the hands of the Teai group to pay off his debt, he's capable of pulling off some amazing strategies and gambits in order to survive. However, once the pressure is off he'll often fall back into his usual lazy habits.
• Akitsune of Kataribe No List can appraise any antique on sight, quickly comes up with ways to use or counter the Grimm artifacts, and barely keeps up in school despite constantly showing up late or sleeping through class. But he'd rather just skip school entirely.
• Pascal of Kaze to Ki no Uta is this. He's a very smart student in his school and he is capable of doing well in classes, but he has failed in classes three years in a row because he prefers to study in more useful/interesting things, like knitting.
• Hatsumi Sen in Kengan Ashura is a lazy Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass who was for all intents and purposes undefeated in the Kengan matches, but had multiple losses by default as a result of things like oversleeping, forgetting, or simply deciding not to show.
• Eriko Futami from Kimikiss skips nearly all her classes but places at the top of every examination consistently.
• Hajime Kindaichi of The Kindaichi Case Files is this in the academic sense. Still, it's pointed out to him that the most shining example of his intelligence (solving locked room murders) isn't exactly the kind of thing that'll get him into a good school. He's basically lazy about everything EXCEPT a good murder mystery. When one of those comes along, he's incredibly dedicated.
• Yurine from Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl is the best at everything without even trying and spends most of her time sleeping in class (including cooking class!). You could say she isn't so much lazy as completely lacking motivation, both because she never has to work hard and because she considers herself a nuisance for other people. She can get serious when she has an actual reason to — said reason is most often her competition with the girl she loves, Ayaka.
• Fujitaka from Kitchen Princess acts like a bum most of the time, but he used to work at a three-star restaurant and occasionally busts out his cooking skills.
• Aomine from Kuroko's Basketball is this to the core. He prefers to sleep on the rooftop rather than go to basketball practice and often shows up for matches at the halfway mark...if he bothers to show up at all. However, he may deconstruct this — he was originally passionate about basketball and worked hard at it because he loved it. But as he got better and better, his opponents starting giving up more and more easily. Eventually, he gave up on being serious about basketball, because there was no one who could equal him at it.
  • Aomine isn't the only one. Back in the day, after the other four members of the Generation of Miracles developed their talents, Akashi gave them the permission to skip training like Aomine and do what they want as long as they play the matches. The only one who continued to train was Midorima. After entering high school, Kise declared that he would skip training when he joined the basketball club, but Kasamatsu forced him to stay and keep training like everyone else regardless of how talented he is. And in the case of Murasakibara, while he's still extremely lazy, he doesn't skip training because he lost a one-on-one to Akashi and is made to accept that Akashi is stronger than him. Murasakibara only listens to people who are better than he is at basketball.
  • Murasakibara is also this trope. He's very good at basketball because of his size, but he doesn't actually care about it all that much (supposedly) so he never usually puts any effort in. He's shown to go all out only three times in the entire series: in the Teikou arc when Akashi beats him in the aforementioned one-on-one, the Seirin vs. Yousen match and the Vorpal Swords vs. Jabberwock match in the sequel Extra Game/Last Game (where he ended up breaking his arm). He's also the only one of the Generation of Miracles not affected by Defeat Means Friendship at the hands of Seirin, which motivated the others to actually enjoy basketball again (yes, even Aomine), and still complains about having to hang out with everybody. He'd much rather be lying in bed eating snacks than be on the court. To top it all off, one of his character songs is even called "Lazy Lazy".
• Angelica and Lucifer from Lapis Re:LiGHTs are middle-rank Rouge students in Flora Girls' Academy, despite their well-known habit of skipping classes and ignoring orders from the administration as the mood strikes them. Angelica was formerly a Child Prodigy who was a part of one of the most talented, famous, and powerful student groups that said school produced and hasn't lost any of her skills in the 3 year-break she took, and Lucifer is a student with one of the highest magical capabilities ever, though she, unfortunately, doesn't have good control over it.
• Little Witch Academia:
  • Akko Kagari tends to frequently sleep in class and generally prefers to do anything other than sitting down and studying, but when she puts her mind to it, she can be bright, creative, clever and quick thinking, which has saved her and/or her friends quite a number of times. She begins to slowly step out of this territory in later episodes of the TV series as she starts to take her studies more seriously.
  • Amanda O'Neil is shown to be a very clever and talented witch, to the point that she can rival The Ace Diana in some things (particularly in broom flying), but she often tends to laze around and cause trouble instead of actually focusing on her studies, primarily due to her disdain of Luna Nova and their strict ways.
• Love at Fourteen: Nagai. Hinohara knows this and motivates him(through questionable means).
• Konata Izumi from Lucky Star is smart and athletic, but she's usually too occupied by her otaku hobbies to actually excel in school. She doesn't usually bother to study until the very last minute, and she somehow still manages to pass exams from pulling all-nighters the day beforehand. Kagami frequently lampshades how she could easily get much higher grades if she channelled all her passion for anime and video games into her studies.
• Verossa Acous of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS is an excellent investigator, but often is late for or skips work.
• Medaka Box:
  • Kumagawa Misogi is capable of feats amazing enough to be considered superhuman, and to boot, possesses a god-like Minus Skill called "All Fiction" that can make any part of reality become "nothing". The problem is his attitude towards life; his defeatism is so intense that he can't even imagine himself winning, and more often than not he'll just lose any motivation towards whatever it is he's trying to do, convinced that any result at all of his actions would only be "incomplete". Instead of going for the win, he mostly tries his best to control the manner in which he loses. In one of the light novels, Medaka Box Juvenile, it's remarked than if he were a basketball player, he would treat even official games as just practice.
• Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun:
  • Kashima is clearly an excellent actor but can't be bothered to go to drama club practices; this is why Hori needs to drag her to practice. Character bio states she is this for just about everything, the reason being that because things often come easily to her, working hard is something that she isn't used to.
  • When Nozaki's little brother Mayu was young he was bullied for being quiet, Nozaki told him to do his best, but if it was too much work he didn't have to bother. Taking that to heart, Mayu uses the least possible effort for anything in his daily life apart from his love for judo. When his club members used judo as bait, he instantly got top grades and became very popular, which irritated them enough to stop the plan.
• Implied in My Hero Academia. Mineta's official stats list his intelligence at 5/5, actually putting him above many of the other "smart" characters. However, in the midterms he placed 9th out of 20, yet still seems strangely proud for someone who's barely in the top half of the class.
• The main conflict of My Neighbor Seki comes from Yokoi attempting to get her classmate Seki to pay attention but inevitably becoming enamoured at the complexity of the various distractions he comes up with, ranging from playing dominoes to animating the entire opening sequence by himself in the anime.
• Naruto:
  • Shikamaru Nara may be one of the smartest ninja in the entire world with an IQ over 200, but he has the energy levels of an 80-year-old man in the body of a teenager and would rather sit back and grumble while playing board games than do any actual work. In the beginning, he was so lazy that he was willing to fail school instead of studying. (It's explained he had the second lowest grades in the academy, and counting Naruto's Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, the lowest.) Even lifting the pencil to take a test was a chore for him. Despite this, he was so smart he passed anyway. He may have also forced himself to work just enough to pass without having the absolute worst grade in the class. His mom would hassle him endlessly if he flunked, and that's even more work to deal with. During the Sound Invasion arc, the Sound ninja used a genjutsu to put everyone in the arena to sleep. Only some of the elite Leaf ninja figured out what was happening and dispelled the technique on themselves. Shikamaru was among those few but still pretended to be sleeping so he wouldn't have to join the battle. Shikamaru was also the only participant in the Chunin Exams that actually got promoted, despite forfeiting his match against Temari (having determined that there was no way he could win). In Naruto Shippuden, after some Character Development triggered by Asuma's death, he becomes more of a Badass Bookworm, regarded as one of the best candidates for Hokage. Because of this, he singlehandedly takes down Hidan, a member of Akatsuki, to the point where it constitutes a Curbstomp. Not only does he kill the immortal by blowing up everything but his head and burying it, still living, in a pretty deep hole, BUT he tricks the guy into killing his own teammate first. The rest of the Konoha 11 (except for Naruto and Sasuke, who'd already surpassed him) eventually caught up to him, with Neji overtaking him, due to his laziness and lack of ambition. Even then, he still can command even Jonin, the level above him, on missions. This is developed further on and he decides that he'll help Naruto with his dream of being Hokage. This after seeing an interaction with the resurrected goofy First Hokage and his serious younger brother, the Second Hokage interact and coming to the conclusion Naruto needs someone to be able to advise him on matters.
  • When he's not being a Badass Teacher, Kakashi Hatake spends a lot of his time reading or generally chilling out. He wasn't always like this, especially as a kid. But as Kakashi matured, he begun judging the teamwork of others over whoever is more lawful.
  • We also have Deidara, whose power is instantaneous but prefers to sit back and watch for a while.
  • Naruto's son Boruto falls into this. He's a supremely talented Child Prodigy, more skilled than his father was at that age, but tends to be a lazy slacker who prefers playing pranks and goofing around instead.
• Also, Negima! Magister Negi Magi's Yue Ayase. She's The Smart Guy Mr. Exposition who only fails in class because she's too depressed to study. When she entered Wizarding School and found a class she's interested in, she went from a complete novice to being the most capable student in the entire school within one month.
• Shiro, the central character in Oishinbo is brilliant but lazy and likes to hang out with the homeless guys.
• One Piece:
  • Admiral Aokiji. Most of the time he's on screen he's either sleeping or relaxing on a chair. He also happens to be one of the Three Admirals, the Marines' most powerful commanders, who in his first appearance brutally curbstomps half of the Straw Hats with almost zero effort (he takes out Robin and Luffy in a single attack). That's not even getting into the sheer carnage he causes at Marineford... However, the most telling case occurs during the timeskip. Sengoku retires after the stress of the job of Fleet Admiral gets to him, especially after the Five Elder Stars cover up the escape of extremely dangerous criminals. He recommends Aokiji for the job, but other officials elect Akainu. While Aokiji would normally never go for such a job, the idea of Akainu becoming head of all Marines is enough for him to get serious. So serious in fact he challenges Akainu to a duel for the job, the loser giving up the spot. This duel between the two Admials goes on for ten days and permanently creates severe weather on the island they are on (massive blizzards on one side and a hot volcanic hell on the other). Despite having the elemental advantage, Akainu barely won and Aokiji quit rather than work for Akainu.
  • Gecko Moriah, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, has a very powerful Devil Fruit ability that lets him manipulate his shadow for a variety of purposes, steal people's shadows and implant them into corpses, creating zombies. However, he's lazy as hell, which makes him much weaker than he should be. In fact, he got so weak, he actually lost his position as a Warlord. He wasn't this originally; he actually was a very proactive fighter in his youth, but his brutal loss against Kaidou, resulting in the death of his crew broke him and messed him up badly. His dependence on his zombies is a result of this.
  • Word of God confirms that Buggy is this. He genuinely has the potential to be one of the most powerful men in the One Piece world (and he's already stronger than he realizes, though much weaker than his followers think he is) — he's just too damn lazy to do anything about it. Eventually however, upon learning that Shanks is planning to go after the One Piece Buggy's ambitions are rekindled and he decides to give his dreams of becoming Pirate King another shot.
  • Dracule Mihawk, the World's Greatest Swordsman. He puts all his energy into maintaining and improving his unparalleled swordsmanship skills — and literally nothing else. Even though he's strong enough to become an Emperor, his lack of ambition means whenever he's not searching for a fight, he'd rather just lounge around at his castle reading and drinking rather than doing anything productive. Indeed, when he's forced out of his peaceful life by the abolishment of the Warlord System, he'd rather just go along with Crocodile's plan to build/acquire their own country so he can go back to relaxing rather than pursue the One Piece and he's utterly furious when Buggy rallies the Cross Guild (along with him and Crocodile) to go after the One Piece since it means dealing with the other Emperors.
• Ping Pong:
  • Most people's opinion of Smile vis-a-vis his table tennis skills.
  • Peco is even more blatant, to the point where he actually loses several matches that he expected himself to be able to coast through, being on the receiving end of more than one Curb-Stomp Battle from Wenge in the first few episodes.
• The Story of Pollyanna, Girl of Love: Pollyanna isn't enthusiastic about taking lessons and doing household chores that her aunt instructed, but she managed to get a high score in school entrance exam in later episodes. Of course, her Country Mouse upbringing could have also had something to do with this.
• Hiro from Pocket Monsters B2 W2 ~ A New Legend ~ is an excellent trainer, but he's very lazy.
• Downplayed with the Nakano sisters in The Quintessential Quintuplets. They're not super genius students by any stretch, but the story reveals that most of the quints' current academic issues are a result of them being actively lazy than stupid, and they're capable of getting good grades when they put an effort to do so. In fact, the flashback chapters reveal that all but Yotsuba actually got passing grades in their previous school, and Yotsuba only flunked out because she spent too much time with extracurricular activities and neglected her studies, hence why her grades dropped.
• Harundo from RaButa normally gets terrible grades, but he manages to get a 97 on a test after only a single study session. Turns out that he had never bothered to read the textbooks before.
• Ranma ½: Ranma, in the manga at least is very intelligent. The biggest example of this is the fact that Ranma isn't worried about Principal Kunō showing Ranma's grades to everyone which implies that either Ranma does not generally get bad grades or he really doesn't care about them (a view point that is countered by Ranma's actions when Principal Kunō implied they are extremely low).
• Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace: Kobayashi is a genius, but prefers to solve murder mysteries instead of focusing on his school work. He reacts with apathy whenever he's warned he's in danger of flunking, and outright admits he thinks school is pointless.
• Belphegor of the villainous Varia in Reborn! (2004). Unsurprising, considering he's the sloth of the Seven Deadly Sins theme they have going.
• Ginei Morioka in Rosario + Vampire is much like this. He's an upperclassman with an Osakan dialect ("hick accent" in the official translation), and he lets the rest of the News Club deal with the "grunt work". He's also a Chivalrous Pervert. Which makes it easy to forget that this is Yokai Acadamy, and he's hypersonic under the full moon. And if the speed-groping of Kurumu Kurono and Mizore Shirayuki didn't make that clear, Fairy Tale and their demolished branch office can vouch for his strength. Mind you, the destroyed office thing occurred with the aid of a friend...when it was daytime. When the Full Moon is up, he is one of the few characters who can fight on even footing with Inner Moka or even come close to handing her ass.
• Kenshin's master from Rurouni Kenshin is capable of laying the smackdown on basically anything, but doesn't do so much because he prefers to make Kenshin do the heavy lifting. The other theory on his inactivity is that he knows whichever side he chooses to aid will win, so he doesn't choose.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Minako Aino is a dedicated fighter and a natural at anything physical or that interests her, but a complete loser when it comes to pretty much everything else. Notable because she is intelligent (as shown in the manga by her plans and how she was able to play the Body Double to Usagi and in the anime her flawless English, something most Japanese have extreme trouble with), but she just can't be bothered (in fact, while she can speak English well her grades are bad). In her origin story Artemis even bemoans just how troublesome it is to train her because she just won't care... Until he finds out how easily she picks up things from video games and loves her appearance, thus taking care of the theory by creating a video game that works also as a training simulator and pointing out she is getting fat from eating too much to get her to train her body. Eventually she becomes Married to the Job, so Artemis doesn't need to trick her to train... But her school grades remain pretty bad.
  • Usagi Tsukino could count for sheer power, but that's not really brilliance. Usagi isn't brilliant, but could get decent grades if she simply did the work.
  • A better example may be her brother Shingo in the anime, who effortlessly gets good grades, is a whiz at most video games, and is a tinkerer par excellence (he once rigs the bathroom scale to break hilariously once Usagi steps on it) but spends a lot of his free time messing around and picking on his sister.
• Hasabe in Servant × Service is actually quite intelligent — yet he loves to slack.
• Sgt. Major Kululu of Sgt. Frog doesn't do anything unless he explicitly wants to do it, even to the detriment of his team. Given the sheer amount he's responsible for, he does seem to keep pretty busy. It's just always off-panel (or -camera), and has at best ancillary benefits to anybody else. He's always shown as lazy when his teammates are around.
• Reconstructed, as much as this trope can be, in Shaman King. Yoh is Brilliant But Lazy, sure. However, he wants to be the Shaman King (who essentially gains the powers of God)... so he can relax and do nothing for the rest of his life. He essentially is willing to work his ass off so that he will eventually never have to do anything again.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, Sonic doesn't even lift a finger to save his elderly owl neighbor (though his tone implies this isn't the first time this has happened), instead allowing an irate Tails to try and take care of it. It's not until it's apparent that both of them are in grave danger that he does anything to help them.^note Of course, since he has Super-Speed, he can afford to wait until the last minute.
  • In Sonic X, Sonic's usually shown napping or exploring around when not fighting Eggman. This gets deconstructed in an Egg Moon Saga episode in which, following Sonic's rise to celebrity status, people all over the place start imitating his laidback lifestyle (minus the brilliant part) to their detriment.
• Prince Lumen in Spider Riders. He would rather sleep than do anything, making it hard to believe he's as skilled as he actually is. Yet he's capable of winning a fight by just dodging.
• Tatsuya Uesugi of Touch (1981) is potentially a brilliant student and an amazing pitcher, but he's lazy and weak-willed, preferring to sleep or read manga rather than train or, God forbids, study.
• Pretty much any of the vampires in Vampire Knight. Especially Aido.
• "Snake" from Vinland Saga is a scruffy, unkempt, surly and sarcastic man who works as security for a farm in the middle of nowhere, where he mostly bums around, sleeps all day and eats his host's food. When pushed into action he's shown to be one of the most skilled fighters in the series, on Thorfinn's level at the very least. He is implied to have been an ex-member of the Varangian Guard, given his weapon (a sabre implied to be made from Damascus steel) and his ability to read Greek.
• Professor Ryoto from Wild Life. One of their best veterinarians, but spends a lot of his time slacking off and reading manga, while tricking poor Tesshou into doing his work.
• Keima, the protagonist of The World God Only Knows, is a genius in more ways than one, and could likely do absolutely anything if he put his mind to it. However, he believes the real world does not meet his standards, so he shuns it in favor of dating sims. The only reason the plot moves forward at all is because of the Explosive Leash that will kill him if he doesn't work at capturing escaped souls.
• Motegi (Belowski in the dub), a minor character from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. He's an excellent duelist who can see and communicate with Duel Spirits (who uses a Human Wave Deck, a difficult strategy to master) but tends to lose interest in anything except dueling and fall asleep when he gets bored.
• Toshino Kyouko of YuruYuri prefers to spend her days lazing about, snacking, playing video games, and usually irritating either Yui or Chinatsu. But, she's also able to ace her tests with one night of cram studying. Something she does on a regular basis. She's also a talented artist, able to produce Doujinshi and even an animated version of one of her Doujinshi almost single-handedly.

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